Educational imaginaries : a genealogy of the digital citizen

Abstract: This thesis makes use of a genealogical approach to map out and explainhow and why computers and citizenship have become so closely connected.It examines the historical continuities and disruptions, and the role thatpopular education has played in this interrelation. Drawing on previousresearch in the overlap between Swedish popular education history andhistorical computer politics, this thesis adds knowledge about howimaginaries of popular education, operating as silver bullet solutions toproblems with computerization, have had important functions as governingtools for at least 70 years. That is, Swedish popular education has since the1950s been imagined as a central solution to problems with computerization,but also to realize the societal potentials associated with computers.Specifically, this thesis makes two contributions: 1) Empirically, the thesisunearths archived, and in many ways forgotten, discourses around thehistorical enactment of the digital citizen, and the role of popular education,questioning assumptions that are taken for granted in current times; 2)Theoretically, the thesis proposes a conceptual model of educationalimaginaries, and specifically introduces the notion (and method) of‘problematizations’ into these imaginaries.